


All things in the Drift

by StripySock



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Drift Compatibility, Frottage, M/M, Sibling Incest, The Drift (Pacific Rim), Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-21
Updated: 2015-08-21
Packaged: 2018-04-16 11:39:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4623999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StripySock/pseuds/StripySock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This wasn't how anyone would ever want to find out, that maybe they had a torch for their brother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All things in the Drift

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zoi no miko (zoi_no_miko)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zoi_no_miko/gifts).



> With lots of thanks to an anon beta. Any mistakes that remain are my own.

The tension in the room was palpable, and Raleigh couldn't stop his leg from bouncing, knocking his kneecap against the  wooden desk in a way that made him wince. Yancy wasn't looking anywhere in particular, except definitely not at Raleigh. It was so close to knowing whether they'd been accepted, that he didn't think either of them could bear to wait another moment.

If there'd been a clock, Raleigh imagined it would've been moving with the slow gooiness of trapped time, each second stretching out for hours, an impossible wait. The doctor, with her steel grey hair scraped back from her face,  looked at the papers, slow fingers thumbing through them as though it were all entirely new, even though every scrap of what they'd told her was in there, she'd heard it all before. "I don't think you should do this," she said abruptly, finally, as though  she'd come to a conclusion within herself.

Raleigh felt the world drop away for a second, the sickness in his gut roiling up again, the tension a sharp ache through his temples. This far, they'd come this far, and they were going to be thrown out on a medical technicality? "Why?" he said, and tried to sound reasonable, dignified, the sort of person the programme would want for a Jaeger pilot.

It was Yancy who picked apart what she really meant. "We can't do this or you don't think we should?"

There was hesitation before she replied. "There's nothing physically wrong with you. You're both healthy young  men, your vitals are good, there's no history of epilepsy, of neurological problems, of stroke. On the face  of it, you're ideal candidates. I'm denying my recommendation that you be seconded to active service, because I don't think you're emotionally prepared to do this."

There was little real room for argument, little room for discussion, but Yancy and Raleigh tried anyway, all thought of gracious dignity disappearing, like shreds of mist in sunlight, their heated replies crisscrossing each other and dying in the silence that sat between them and the doctor, more palpable than her wooden desk. She listened to them, completely unmoved, her fingers crossed at the knuckles, the only sign of strain in her the way her fingers pressed into the back of her other hand, white stretched flesh underneath them, as though that was the only grip she could keep on the situation.

When even Raleigh couldn't find another demand for answers, she pushed the paper over towards them, unstamped.  It was a concession, but not much of one. She hadn't stamped it with the angry red of a direct no, the absolute  crushing of their Jaeger dream, but on the other hand it was missing the vital frank of permission. "Why?"  Raleigh repeated, tried to keep the aggression to a minimum.

Perhaps it touched a nerve in her, perhaps she'd been waiting for the silence all along, so that her words would drop with lethal force. "The two partners who were fed into that machine on the recommendation of  this medical facility, are dead, or utterly incapable of serving. No matter how compatible you are on paper or in the kwoon, it would be irresponsible and impossible for me to recommend two young men who  fit the profile so exactly of those who each time, fail and fall."

"There might be something wrong with the machine," Yancy said. "There's nothing wrong with us, and you have to know it. Maybe the machine is wrong, but that doesn't mean we aren't compatible."

She shook her head. "I need something a little more concrete than an excellent fighting compatibility, to  override the details of your circumstances." There was a long hesitation, an uncomfortable slickness to the neutral expression she was wearing, as though she were debating saying something else, her jaw worked for a second,  and Raleigh couldn't stop watching her.

"What can we do to change your mind?" Raleigh said, when he gave up on her finishing her sentence, and she bit her lip again, pressed her raw-knuckled hands closer together.

"We don't have _time_  for this," Yancy said, and there was urgency bleeding through every word, even more shocking from him, lassitude laid aside for this. "There's no-one else. You know it and we know it."

"Just tell us," Raleigh said, reckless now. "Is it me?"

She looked up at that. "It's both of you," she said, and like that was the catalyst, the thing that'd unleash the tiger, she was talking. "You think you saw it all," and she leafed through the papers on her desk now, spread them out with thin fingers. Page after page of Drift transcripts, words tumbled out as they'd been hooked up for the first, the second, the third time, fleeting fragments of images, spilled forth as they'd  been urged to talk, to repeat, given a pill to help them on the way. Raleigh for one barely remembered half the shit that had dribbled out of his mouth.

He looked at the piece of paper that she pushed at him. _House,_  he saw, _running through the house,  candy in hand, light too bright, Yancy's gonna steal, fuck you, fuck you, yes, hands so fucking strong, fuck  me, Yancy, Yancy, Yancy_  and there was a bright bloom of heat on his face, crawling up his chest as well,  a strange prickle under his shirt. The naked lightbulb overhead gave him no shadow to hide in, and paralyzed, he couldn't turn his head to see Yancy by his side, wondered what the fuck his brother was reading in his own transcript.

More than anything it was embarrassment that flooded him, a sheer shock of shame to the gut, and he wanted to  vomit all over the floor from it, queasiness of waiting for an exam tying with the sickness of what he'd just read. Who the hell had heard him? What the hell else had he said? It was there in  black and white on paper, endless streams of words, none of which make sense, and threaded through it  _Yancy_  which wasn't a surprise, except for the shape of the curveball his brain had thrown him.

"Fuck it," Yancy said, and there was a sore note to his voice, that chimed with everything Raleigh felt.  "What the fuck is this?" Any semblance of politeness had fallen away, a frisson of fear saturated his words instead. "Why the hell are you showing us  this shit? You're a goddamn doctor, you know people can think things that they'd never do, that they don't mean. You're telling me no-one else, no other Jaeger pilots have had weird shit fall out of their brain before?"

"Of course not," came the reply, quick as a whip."But the last people who came through here with that particular set of circumstances killed themselves, Mr Beckett; the ones before them slipped irreversibly out of synch. And as much as we need people who can win this war, we need people who are likely to survive Drifting with their Jaeger even more. I'm not taking that risk again. You know now, you've pushed for your  answer. Go away and figure out what you can live with."

She stood then, and the impersonalness of a doctor had been stripped from her, like plausible deniability had been from them. There was nothing left to say, and Raleigh made himself drop the sheets that he was clutching before he left, felt her eyes on their shoulders, and another hot flush of shame ran down his spine. Not that she knew - she was a doctor, this wasn't beyond her purview - but that she knew before he did,  knew something he'd never even considered, had laid bare himself to himself.

"Gentlemen," she said, thin and dry as dust. "Sort it out and I'll stamp you certified. Any way you have to.  As you so rightly pointed out, we need you."

They were excused daily duties, Doc's orders, and Raleigh cursed those orders with fluency and skill inside his head. He needed to be doing something, he needed to wipe his mind bare and clean and lose it in rote work, needed to look somewhere and not see Yancy look away, defeated fall of his shoulders reminding him every moment that it was both of them.

He wanted it just to be him. He wanted to be someone sick, who Yancy could forgive. Someone sick, but they'd work through it together, because they were brothers and brothers don't give up on each other. He couldn't handle the idea that Yancy was as deep down and in as he was, something twisting under the surface of their shared mind. A little bit of that was because he couldn't handle Yancy hurting, a lot of it was fear, and even more was the numbing conviction that Yancy was never gonna be able to forgive himself.

Words came again and again to his mouth and were bitten back. _We don't have to do anything_ almost made its way out, but it was crushed back by a wave of nausea at the thought of saying it, at the thought that it could even be a possibility that they'd do something about it. This was going to drive him mad.

They'd been crouched on their respective bunks for hours now, confined to their room, not by any spoken order, but from general principle. Raleigh didn't think he could stand seeing anyone else yet, to hear anyone ask if they had been certified. It was probably halfway round the base by now that the golden Beckett boys had failed out on the final medical, all of those hours in the kwoon wasted, every aced test meaningless now. A dicky heart perhaps, or maybe an unkinder rumor that they'd balked at the last step, despite every Drift test coming back scored deeper and darker in the paper than any of the teams in their program.

There was nothing to do, nothing to read or talk or think about that wasn't the ugly deep chasm in front of them, widening every moment they said nothing at all. Raleigh thought about the distilled grain liquor strapped beneath the bed, and winced away from the idea. He didn't know what he'd say if he got drunk, couldn't trust a word out of his mouth now, now that he knew what his subconscious had spilled, the first time it was plied with a pill and told to spit up the things even he didn't know.

"Was she right?" Yancy said, voice muffled in the bend of his knees, head tucked down as he surveyed a particularly interesting blanket thread.

"Right?" Raleigh asked, felt his way slowly through the thought. It was the first time in his life that any conversation with Yancy had felt like a minefield, riddled with conversational bombs, ready to take an unsuspecting leg.

"If you'd found out, in the Drift, would you ever have trusted me again, enough to let me Drift with you?"

"What the hell?" Raleigh said. "What do you mean me? How would you have felt if you'd seen that in my mind? Not like just one of us screwed up along the line."

Yancy shook his head, like he always did when he pulled the 'I'm three years older than you and I know what's best' trick. "C'mon, be honest."

"I don't know whether she was fucking right or not," Raleigh said, and the word fucking, summoned up an image, smooth hot flesh on top of him, rocking him down into the bed, his fingers digging into his brother's back, the gut punch of it warm and sweet and terrifying, like some stopper had been lifted off and let hell out. "But I know one thing. We're Jaeger pilots. We were born to fly. Hell, we're the best," and the familiar arrogant words fell so easily from his mouth, it was almost like they were the truth. His back prickled with heat as though he'd been lying naked on rough blankets, something heavy pushing him down.

"Raleigh, seriously. What if I infected you when we Drifted that first time man?" and Yancy sounded as sick as Raleigh felt, like he was pressing back a flow of bitter words, swallowing them down until just a little of the poison came out.

"Shut the hell up," Raleigh said, and he didn't want to hear it, didn't want to think it, didn't want any of this conversation to be happening at all. "If you're thinking like that, how do you know it wasn't me? How do you know I didn't do it to you, make you think you want something, just because some bit of me thinks I should get down with you." It wasn't a relief saying it, there was no let up in the wired tension of his body, saying the words was not an exorcism, it fixed nothing, just laid it bare and ugly in front of them. _Get down with you,_  his mind said back to him, and his hands were in Yancy's hair, and Yancy had him pinned by the hips was sinking down, mouth so close that Raleigh almost jerked forward from the force of want.

Oblivious to the massive freak out Raleigh was experiencing, Yancy continued. "You ever think anything like this before?"

The words were too close to what Raleigh had just thought. "Did you?" he said back, and wished he could've stopped himself.

Yancy didn't reply, and the silence was almost enough answer, enough to make Raleigh wonder in the secrecy of his own head, a secrecy that hasn't been sacrosanct in months now, if Yancy was right. "No," Yancy said softly. "But I can't stop thinking about it now." He'd never been good at lying, and part of Raleigh wondered if that's just because there were no secrets, not anymore, just thoughts held back until the next time they climbed inside each other's head.

"Pink elephants," Raleigh said. "That shit about how if you're told not to think about something, you can't think of anything else." He was saying anything, anything to get away from the hot shiver of sensation that had spread through him at the thought that Yancy was thinking the same things he was. Four hours ago, they'd been normal. Four hours before, they'd been tipped for the top, brothers in arms ready to save the world. Now, he'd been turned upside down and shaken to see what fell out, and the answer wasn't pretty.

"Yeah, small things, at least I don't want to fuck an elephant, I suppose."

"Would it be worse?" Raleigh asked idly, as though joking about this shit would solve it, as though this could be dismissed. Like one day they’d wake up, and joke about this. If they didn’t die first.

“Probably not,” Yancy said, but he was no longer looking at the bed, got his head turned towards Raleigh just a little bit. “Elephant would probably smell better.”

There was a nervous laugh sat at the base of Raleigh’s throat, but he didn’t let it out, afraid that if he started, he might not stop, and this was only minutely better than sitting in silence and letting the acid eat them through.

“Hang on,” Yancy said, quieter now, and turned so they could see each other’s eyes. “I want to try something.” He shuffled closer, over the bed, and Raleigh felt the sweat on his back chill to ice, his heart thumping raggedly inside him, incapable of moving away, like he had to watch this play out. For a moment, he thought Yancy was going to kiss him, and his breath hitched - in fear, in anticipation, he didn’t know and it terrified him. Yancy didn’t, though. He hugged Raleigh, tentative press of his cheek against Raleigh’s head, Raleigh’s face squashed against the clean sweat smell of his t-shirt, and he breathed out, relief denied before, now achieved.

It wasn’t as though they even hugged that often, but they were all each other had left now, and he hadn’t even thought how lonely it would be, not to touch for fear of this, and Doctor Obasanjo was _wrong._  “You were right in there,” he muttered. “People think fucked up shit all of the time. Means nothing,” and the words came out as a puff of warm air against Yancy’s skin, and Raleigh felt the tremor that went through Yancy, stilled, arms awkwardly locked around him still, felt the involuntary burgeoning of something inside himself, too terrifying to think about.

Yancy squeezed him tighter for a second and then let go, hands falling awkwardly to his sides. “We’re good,” he said. “We’re good,” as though by saying it twice, he could make it so.

They should probably talk about it. Raleigh thought that again and again over the empty next few hours, worn close and thin by too much time in the same space, the same restless, stirring unease in his gut that’s been there all day. They talked about the pointless shit instead, base gossip, words on words, plastering over everything else. When dinner time came, Yancy disappeared and came back with a couple of trays of slop, reserved the ersatz butterscotch pudding for himself, left Raleigh with the strawberry one that they both hated.

“Anyone say anything?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Yancy said, but there was a shadow behind his eyes. If they flunked out of this, if they failed out of this, then they’ll have sacrificed so much for so little. Both of them knew it, it didn’t need to be said.

Raleigh didn’t bother replying, spooned the strawberry pudding in, like it tasted good just to piss Yancy off. Tried not to think about tomorrow and everything it was going to bring.

“Drink?” he said, and when Yancy nodded, rummaged for a couple of glasses, while Yancy unhooked the flat bottle of spirits from underneath the bed. All the objections to drinking hadn’t disappeared, but Raleigh couldn’t take another moment of the silence without something to dampen it. So they drank, quick little gulps, mouthfuls at a time, and it was the closest thing to turps that Raleigh had ever drunk.

“You were ripped off hard,” Yancy said, but it didn’t stop him from pouring a third glass.

“You want better booze, barter for it yourself,” Raleigh replied, with a lazy attempt at righteous anger that fizzled in a second. If they got caught, there would be hell to pay, but he could almost bring himself not to care, if he didn’t think about how tomorrow all those rules could be moot.

The alcohol was a mistake. Raleigh knew it would be, thought hazily that maybe he’d even planned it that way, but it was kind of worth it, to see the hectic pink flush on Yancy’s face, as he talked about some engineering shit that Raleigh hadn’t listened to the first time round. Yancy would probably sit here all night if Raleigh let him, he got even lazier when he was three sheets to the wind, but Raleigh couldn’t let him sit because the alcohol might have been a mistake, might have made him think weird shit, but his idea was brilliant. It was gonna fix them.

The Domes never slept, but it was a reduced night shift at least, and both Raleigh and Yancy had learnt how to walk straight and tall, and hide being a little the worse for wear. Nobody stopped them, nobody even took a second look, but it was still with profound relief that they got to Test Room A, and the familiar, innocuous headsets.

Raleigh could tell Yancy wanted to say it was a bad idea - which it wasn’t - that it’d get them packed out of the Dome faster than light - more than possible. But Yancy held his tongue which was a first in itself, picked up the handset first and offered it to Raleigh. He noted that his hand wasn’t as steady as usual, took a deep breath and felt the uneasy mixture of pudding and alcohol heave in him. “Here goes nothing,” he said, and Yancy picked up the second one.

Raleigh wanted to say it. Wanted to say that whatever happened in there, whatever he saw, whatever Yancy saw in him, it didn’t fucking matter. But in thirty seconds, Yancy would know it anyway. So he fit on the helmet, fastened the straps, and flipped the switch.

They clicked like always, instantaneously, no hesitation, strong and deep, riding the low connecting wave, only a little blurred on the top layers by alcohol, but fitting together like always on the lower, jagged slashed edges of psyche blending without a pause. They connected and held, and Raleigh could see the screen through his squinted eyes - connection more than enough to maintain, and they could loosen that first electric clutch of mind to mind. It was different to being hooked up with a Jaeger as well, deep metal thrum surrounding them, distracting them, and neither of them had ever tried this before.

Connection was key, the ability to synch and move, the most important one there was. Turning to the left, just a little, purposefully digging in just a bit, was not recommended, but Raleigh could feel Yancy doing it anyway, opened up and let him in, fear tinging the edges of memory with coldness, flighting, wispy little scraps of information in dizzying swirling patterns, and he recognised it all - sometimes through his eyes, sometimes through Yancy’s, all of it familiar, all of it home.

He relaxed into it, felt the steady pace of Yancy by his side, as their memories separated out a little like usual, connection strong and true, echoing through his blood, and fuck the doctor, fuck the program, even with the silent heavy knowledge of sickness between them, they were the best. He laughed at his own arrogance, and felt Yancy laugh as well, so close that the joke was his own as well, and it was the work of a moment to fold into him, get back in and closer _all that’s left, family, Yancy_ , until the now familiar spike of lust hit him where it shouldn’t.

It wasn’t like they hadn’t been told, before they’d ever signed up or been in the same room as a machine like this, that the Drift could do things to you. That it was never a one way street, minds rubbed together showed new, tender skin, exposed layers. The Drift changed you, you and your partner changed each other. He’d just never expected to find this, squatting under the overturned stone.

There was fear. A lot of it, and some of it was Yancy’s echoed back and aching, black hole of disgust and shame pulling them in together until they almost drowned in it. There was also the aching, gnawing sense of something new, that he could no longer remember not existing. There had been a time before this, but that time was gone, and already the tide washed in to take the memories. Every objection, every fear, every doubt was mirrored and answered between them here, and when they wrenched off the helmets, Raleigh just had the presence of mind to grab the printout before Yancy’s skin touched his.

He could hear Yancy, half in his mind, half in his ears, a hurried mumble of “ _shit, we shouldn’t do this, shouldn’t do this to you, oh God,_ ” and the only way to shut him up was with the plausible touch of their mouths, the breathless stolen guiltiness of shared transgression, and underneath it all, the laughter, the irrepressible bubble of weird happiness, and underneath that, the denied silent freakout that was just waiting for half a chance, that Raleigh wasn’t going to give it.

They were drunker than they were before the Drift, riding high on the feeling, and Raleigh could feel Yancy in his mind still, tender presence through the touch of his skin, the bruise of his elbow as they made their way back to their room, ghost drifting for the first time, like they were reluctant to let go, deep cling of mind to mind. None of the reasons why they shouldn’t do this had gone, but Raleigh was too hyped up on it all, on the reciprocation, the plea of the darkest touch of their minds for something more.

Touching for the second time was the bit that almost sobered him up. Once was explainable, dismissable. Alcohol, unbalanced emotional states, the Drift, the fear, sexual frustration layered on all of those things, making the impossible thinkable. Twice was a conscious decision, a deviation, a stepping aside from deniability.

“We should stop,” Yancy said it for them, close enough that Raleigh could see the sandiness of his eyelashes, feel the puff of his breath, the fastness of it. Close enough that he could feel the solid shift of his shoulders, the warmth of him in the cold room.

“We should,” he replied noncommittally. He didn’t know where the sickness had gone, the only thing that was inside him now was want, spreading through him. He was the reckless one, Yancy the one who pulled him back when he went too far, but they seemed to have lost that familiar, safe footing. He didn’t say what he thought -that they’d already waded in too far, there was no pulling back now, not when it couldn’t be a secret that they wanted it, not between them.

Raleigh didn’t know if he leaned forward, or if Yancy did, he only knew that they were half-kissing, quick presses against each other, neither fish nor fowl, and he could feel thin tremors going through them both, a sustained shiver. It took a moment, in which the weirdness almost overwhelmed him, until he turned his head, and Yancy let the tight press of his mouth soften, and it was an actual kiss, tentative touch of tongue igniting sensation. This close they were almost the same height exactly, Yancy’s the tallest person he’d ever kissed, and he let himself touch finally, felt Yancy’s hands rake up his t-shirt, dig into the muscle of his back, skin against skin.

He reciprocated, fingers clutching at whatever he could reach, and if Yancy were anyone else, Raleigh’d be teasing him, fingers hooked into his belt, running down that stretch of bare skin, unspoken promise spelt out with his hands. But it was Yancy, and he still felt his chest burn with the thought as though he’d held a breath too long. The Drift was with them still. It was there when Yancy bit at the spot on Raleigh’s neck that sent icy pleasure tingling through him, white blunt teeth tugging at his skin, no intent to mark but it still felt like a brand. The Drift was there with them, because Raleigh knew what Yancy felt when Raleigh brought his hand into his hair and wound through the short strands, gentle tug at it, and he did it just to feel the way Yancy flushed. It felt like a dance whose steps had been mapped out years before. He’d never thought about any of this, seen none of it in Yancy’s mind, but the knowledge was there, buried deep.

It almost came as a surprise that he was hard, he hadn’t thought about the logical progression of what they were doing, each step a cautious feeling out of a rocky path, as though this touch, that kiss, would be the moment the edifice crumbled. It was Yancy who pressed the point, because Raleigh was reckless, but Yancy was brave. Slid his hand under Raleigh’s sweats, ground up against him, and Raleigh had no choice but to stumble back into his bed, and wrestle Yancy down, push them up against each other, a tangle of cloth and limbs, Yancy pulling at his pants, fumbling with his own, until they were half naked.

Raleigh could feel the wet rub of their dicks, bit down hard on his own lip as he ground against Yancy, head down, tucked into Yancy’s neck, rough and ready, felt Yancy stroke his hands down his back, pull him down further, closer until there was hardly even air between them, no space for doubt or regret. He could feel Yancy’s hand slip inbetween them, swipe over the head, grasping them both in his hand, as much as he could hold, and Raleigh had never come like this before, not from so little, not even really a handjob, just the sure steadiness of Yancy’s touch.  It was too fast and not fast enough, the ride to orgasm, and he would have been embarrassed, if Yancy wasn’t right there with him, seizing up and coming over himself, a stifled moan, that had Raleigh jerking one last time.

Yancy rolled him off, and Raleigh flailed for balance on a bed too narrow for two, snapped up his eyes to see if the inevitable regret was in Yancy's face, wondered what it said, if he felt none at all. Yancy wasn't tensing up or pulling away though, merely reaching for the standard issue wetwipes, one each. "Door locked?" he asked.

"Nah," Raleigh said, and disentangled his feet from discarded sweatpants, didn't bother to put them on before he went to do it, walking mostly naked across the room, not nearly as uncomfortable as hovering when he got back, torn between the weirdness of sharing a bed, and the thought of getting into his own.

Yancy solved that difficulty as well. "Your bed," he said firmly, and suited action to word by getting in himself. Fitting them both in was an exercise in sharing personal space and careful puzzle piece management, but they just about managed it, and Raleigh stared out into the darkness, no words in his mouth, as silent as Yancy, and this was weirder than what they'd done already. Somewhere in between thinking about that, and listening to the relentless gurgle of a water pipe below the floor, Raleigh fell asleep.

 

Any awkwardness the next morning was swept away by the fact that they were so late awake that the only surprise was that nobody had burst down the door to get to them, and the resultant frantic race to dress.

"Shit," Yancy said, "where's a clean t-shirt when you need one?"

Raleigh, mouth full of toothbrush and foam, gestured towards the bedpost, and turned his attention back to cutting thirty seconds off an already speedy prep time. Out in the corridor, mostly dressed, only two minutes to get to the office on time, there wasn't only no time to talk about whatever the hell had happened last night, but there wasn't even time to talk strategy, what they'd say to get the CO to see their side of the story.

Skidding in with ten seconds to spare, they composed themselves and took up the usual stance, shoulder to shoulder, Raleigh trying not to catch Doctor Obasanjo's eye, and mostly succeeding. All of his resolve to plead his case vanished when the CO rounded the desk, and looked at the doctor with an inquiring eye. "As you know, gentlemen, this is mostly a formality before we welcome you to the Corps." He flicked through the test scores, the commendations, the reports. "Subject to medical approval, I have no hesitation in assigning you to Gipsy Danger. Generally this would be done through a medical report, but the doctor asked to be present at this meeting. Is there anything you'd like to add, Doctor?"

She looked at them both for long seconds. "No," she said finally. "There isn't. Except to offer my congratulations and thanks, of course."

Raleigh could've dropped dead from shock, but as it was, he couldn't restrain his grin. Gipsy Danger. She was going to be theirs, and he wasn't looking a gift horse in the mouth. "Thank you, Doctor, thank you, sir," he said, almost stumbled over the words. "You won't regret this."

The CO nodded and shuffled together the papers. "You'll want to tell your class of course. Then get yourself prepared for reassignment and further training. Congratulations again." It was a clear dismissal and Raleigh and Yancy took it as such, holding the door open for the doctor as she left as well, thanking them with a nod.

"Sorry," Raleigh said, before she left. "What changed your mind?"

"Last night," she said. "Someone broke into the Drift simulators. I think they forgot that all Drift reports are mirrored automatically to my computer, a legitimate run or not. It was an exceptional Drift pattern though, strong, unbroken. Not the sort of Drift you'd expect to see if there was conflict. I still wasn't sure, but when I saw you come in, well, the problem we mentioned, had clearly resolved itself." There was nothing in her voice, no judgement or pleasure, nothing but satisfaction in having made the right call. "Whatever you said to each other was clearly enough to keep you a functioning unit, and I don't think you'll have much else to fear. I look forward to seeing the way you handle a Jaeger. Good day."

"Jesus," Yancy said. "I've almost sweat through this t-shirt in fear."

"Yeah, same," Raleigh said. "Now let's stow our shit away. Next stop Gipsy Danger." He fell into stride with Yancy, perfect harmony, and thought about the future. A Jaeger underneath him, a brother at his side, and the barely felt touch of his hand, a brush that left every possibility open. It was going to be good.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback appreciated.


End file.
